eye

If this proposition had come from a man of suspected principles, it would have been impossible to doubt that that man contemplated great civil disturbance; that he had his fixed upon the train of the mighty mine upon which stands, in heaven knows what hazardous security, the whole constitutional grandeur and ancient legislative nobleness of our state; and that he was waiting only for the first breath of party to kindle his torch into flame.

THE Popish Church in Ireland is an anomaly in government. A powerful, reserved, haughty body, holding an immense, ignorant, bold, superstitious multitude chained at its heels, stands in the heart of the empire. It refuses allegiance to the King, and gives it to a stranger; it claims independence, and acts with the functions and forms of an independent power, holding its synods and assemblies at its will, sending and receiving ambassadors, and keeping up a constant public diplomatic intercourse with the continent through Rome*.

The Pope may send into the bosom of Ireland as many emissaries as the shifting practices of

* Drs. Murray and Milner were sent in 1814 to Rome formally as ambassadors from the Priesthood.

Mr. O'Connell in 1814, moved in the Catholic Association, that an ambassador "should be sent to the Pope, to give his holiness correct information respecting the Roman Catholics."

See Mr. O'Gorman's motion, July 1813, for sending an ambassador to the Spanish Cortes to demand their interference on account of " the enslaved and depressed state of their fellow Catholics in Ireland."

I

an Italian court, or the hostile interests of his immediate protectors may demand; he may flood Ireland with agents and conspirators, in the pay of France, Austria, Italy and Spain!

If he would not startle the invidious vigilance of an alien act, he has a thousand Irish Priests wandering about the Vatican, who would rejoice to have "their qualities tasked to do his bidding" in Ireland, and whom we could no more keep out, than we could the wind that brought them. A band of Jesuits, the concentrated spirit of the blackest and most poisonous stuff of superstition, have been already consigned, and let loose on the land; and the commodity is not yet exhausted in the great warehouse of holy wrath at Rome.

Can those things be forgotten, when we see Popery advancing to the gates of our Parliament and demanding to be let in. Shall we suffer it to march through those portals of the constitution, with spread ensigns, and in the undiminished pride of holy victory, with the banner of St. Dominic, and the sword of St. Bartholomew; or shall we not compel it to disarm before its approach, and require from it the common oath of all, to the safety of the commonwealth?

But, we are told by the Popish Advocates, that if we refuse the "Catholic claims we shall have a rebellion." We shall have no rebellion.

Among all the tumults of Ireland for the last hundred years, the Popish claims have stirred no rebellion. I throw out of the narrative the five hundred preceding years, that figure in the speeches of the Popish orators, a period when the country was covered with native bloodshed and barbarism, when fierce Irish passions and fiercer Irish superstition overwhelmed all public hope, and the only quiet was the quiet of the wilderness and the grave. In those feuds all was popery; monks and legates raised the banner, the Desmonds slaughtered the Geraldines, and the Geraldines revenged the slaughter, with the same consecrated Roman sword*. But those are scenes and times in which experience can gather no fruit of wisdom; a great morass of history, in which truth can scarcely find a spot firm enough for the tread of her foot.

The first disturbance in Ireland in the last century, was that of the "Whiteboys," who

* Ireland was not reduced to Popery until the year 1152, in the popedom of Eugenius. The ritual had been previously Greek. Ireland was given by a Bull of Pope Adrian to Henry the 2nd. See " The Bishop of St. David's Tracts."

commenced their riots in the South, in 1759. Those were Papists, because the whole population of the South was Papist. But their demands were not the "Catholic claims." They uniformly declared that the causes of their rising were poverty, the enclosure of the commons on which they had been accustomed to feed their cattle, the severity of tithe proctors, and the exactions of the Popish Priests, in the shape of fees. This peasant tumult was exaggerated abroad into rebellion, and some agents of the Pretender were sent among them. But after a long and wasteful continuance it died away.

The next disturbance was that of the " Defenders and Peep o'day boys," in the North of Ireland, in 1784. This arose from a quarrel between two peasants, presbyterians; the beaten man vowed vengeance against a Papist who had given some assistance to his opponent, and the vengeance was speedily extended from the parties to their relatives, and from these to a large district of both persuasions. The Papists took the title of "defenders," probably as being the injured party; the Presbyterians called themselves " peep o'day boys" from making their aggressions at an early hour. Law was lenient or careless, and much mischief was